Died #OnThisDay 1837 John Blackburne, Liberal MP for Huddersfield, 1834-7. He had played an important role in the reform of municipal government in 1835. There’s more about this new system of local elections in this blog from our editor Philip Salmon: victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/1...
reviewed London Falling, a moving and well-told story that does not really match the marketing.
foreignpolicy.com/2026/04/17/p...
Great story. A v good friend was DV'd for the FCO years ago. One question was: "does your wife have expensive tastes?". Answer: "Yes, but she works in banking and earns far more than I do". He passed.
Fortunately the attention span of minors these days is strictly limited to 1:30
🎧 NEW PODCAST
Dynamic alignment & Henry VIII powers: What will the Government’s EU reset mean for Parliament?
Why has the Ecclesiastical Committee blocked Church of England reforms?
Is it wise to prorogue Parliament for two weeks given global tensions?
Link in next post👇
There was also a logistical reason why a broad power of secondary legislation was favoured under s2(2) ECA 1972. Dynamic alignment may leave little room for legislative manoeuvring. Parliament may thus have to pass Bills where amendments are difficult/impossible. A bad use of its limited time.
New Commons Library briefing: recent trends on Written parliamentary questions from MPs
commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...
Later today the Procedure Committee is hearing from a Conservative Shadow Minister and the Lib Dem Chief Whip on Written Parliamentary Questions (WPQs).
The Hansard Society submitted evidence to this inquiry – here’s what we found 🧵
www.hansardsociety.org.uk/publications...
There’s a lot of confusion right now among journalists and MP about secondary legislation and what a possible EU deal would mean.
A quick thread to clear a few things up on votes, Henry VIII powers & parliamentary scrutiny. 🧵
1/ First: what is a “normal parliamentary vote”?
I don't know if this counts but I love the fact that helicopter isn't from "heli" and "copter" but "helico" and "pter". Something satisfyingly odd about that.
This is really good. My experience of driving through secondary legislation in government was that the blockers were (a) availability of legal drafting resource and (b) Ministerial bandwidth to sign off minor amends. /1
Printed text from the Reports of Sir John Kelyng
In 1660, judges couldn't agree on which regnal year to use in the indictment against the regicides, as the crime of killing Charles I occurred on the last regnal day of Charles I's reign but also the first of Charles II's. So they just went with "30 Jan 1649" [from Sir John Kelyng's Reports]
Handwritten document detailing the first rules of the House
After five days of discussion, the House Select Committee on Rules issued its first set of parliamentary guidelines #OTD 1789. https://loom.ly/-SsB_TA
1/ The timeline for the appointment of the new Armed Forces Commissioner is extraordinary:
3 March: submits CV to MoD
13 March: interviewed online by Defence Secretary
14 March: offered job
25 March: @CommonsDefence Select Cmtt pre-appointment hearing
1 April: assumes legal duties
This was a really fun episode to take part in.
The "Parliament Matters" podcast is really good - do give it a try if you're looking for something new!
That wasn’t because of this (as someone else says, Aldrin is Presbyterian).
The RC Bishop of Orlando claimed that because it was an expedition from his territory, medieval canon law dating back to New World expeditions meant the Moon became part of his diocese.
"In the most extreme case, our model achieved the top rank on a standard chest X-ray question-answering benchmark without access to any images."
Well this isn't good 😮
arxiv.org/abs/2603.21687
🎧 In this week’s episode: the legislative “wash-up” + listener questions
📊 Why are MPs submitting so many more Written Questions than before?
❓ What is a “dilatory motion”?
🏛️ What's the interplay between party and parliamentary rules in the Commons?
Link in post below 👇
Can exposure to celebrities from stigmatized groups reduce prejudice? To address this question, we study the case of Mohamed Salah, a visibly Muslim, elite soccer player. Using data on hate crime reports throughout England and 15 million tweets from British soccer fans, we find that after Salah joined Liverpool F.C., hate crimes in the Liverpool area dropped by 16% compared with a synthetic control, and Liverpool F.C. fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets relative to fans of other top-flight clubs. An original survey experiment suggests that the salience of Salah’s Muslim identity enabled positive feelings toward Salah to generalize to Muslims more broadly. Our findings provide support for the parasocial contact hypothesis—indicating that positive exposure to out-group celebrities can spark real-world behavioral changes in prejudice.
How on earth had I missed this before now? (h/t @financialtimes.com; source: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...)
Not to be an alarmist, but I've just subscribed to the RSS for statutory instruments enabled by powers delegated by the Energy Act 1976. One can never to be too sure.
api.parliament.uk/procedure-br...
Ok. My understanding of the electoral fraud situation is this.
1. Democracy volunteers put out a statement at one minute past poll close. They said this was at a level they’d not seen before
Votes this evening?! I didn’t think they were actually going to do this… 🤯
Weird to think that Liza Minnelli and Dusty Springfield were respectively only 43 and 50 when they made their comeback records with the Pet Shop Boys. At the time they felt like ancient ghosts of showbiz past. The equivalents now (in age if not in stature) would be Cheryl Tweedy and Emma Bunton.
In 1975, Roy Jenkins advised the Queen to grant the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition the title 'royal.' The Palace returned his submission. My post looks at what this reveals about the reality of royal influence in the British constitution. venerablepuzzle.wordpress.com/2026/03/23/w...
Two fistfights, bomb threat -- then crickets Austin -- you won't believe this but there were two fistfights on the floor of the House, a bomb scare in the capital...
If you ever think your legislature is having a bad day, this was a Monday in Texas in 1969
There was once a government contract - standard terms and conditions I was told, combining the wisdom of many - and it had no service obligation, no payment obligation, three provisions regarding death and personal injury, and a Y2k remedy nearly a decade after 2000.
AI contracts remind me of this.
